10 Awful-Sounding Sequels That Have No Business Being Made

Millions of words have already been dedicated to criticising Hollywood’s obsession with remaking, rebooting and releasing sequels in preference to creating anything new, because though the past couple of years has seen successful reboots of Spider-Man and the X-Men, a mega-selling sequel to Nolan’s Batman franchise and a fantastic new Bond movie, for every success there are a number of crashing failures.

Unfortunately, when it comes to established franchises and properties, critical failure doesn’t always mean commercial failure, and the studios inevitably churn out the next addition, banking on the brand instead of the quality of the films. So we end up with yet another Paranormal Activity sequel, or some other sequel that over-extends the original and either threatens to destroy the legacy of the film or franchise through inevitable poor quality (think Indiana Jones and Star Wars) or appears to have completely missed the point that nobody liked the original anyway (Slap Shot 2).

This article is going to focus on those films that the powers that be in Hollywood have decided, in their infinite wisdom need to be made, and which will almost certainly be terrible (or at least vastly inferior to earlier films in the same franchise).

There is of course a reason for that use of the word business up there in the title – of course that’s why these films have been optioned: the almighty dollar is an awful lot more influential in Hollywood than any commitment to the legacy of a franchise, or its critical success. And if a studio suspects they can squeeze another sizable box office return, what should they care if there’s a fairly major compromise in terms of quality?